If you are struggling right now, you aren't alone

If you are struggling right now, you’re not alone. It’s part of a rolling trauma response. Here are tips to help you through.

Yes, winter is a fallow time of year. A time when it’s natural to go within—whether you are a tree that is waiting for new leaves, a woodchuck in hibernation, or a human person who wants to cozy up in their jammies next to a fire and read. In which case, it’s a perfect time to establish some hygge in your space: bust out the afghans and candles and cocoa. Hygge is a Danish term for a certain kind of friendly, welcoming coziness that shares its root word with the word “hug,” and you can read more about it in this previous post.

Or perhaps you, like several of my gardener friends, have begun planning your garden for spring. Maybe you already have seed packets at the ready, and will be starting some crops inside, either in pots or in egg cartons. As Audrey Hepburn reportedly said, “To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.” You can read a previous post about how gardening, especially during this pandemic, has helped some of us to lower our anxiety and feel a bit more in charge.

This past weekend, I enjoyed spending time with women who were ready to follow their dreams, as part of Dream It, Do It. It was magical in so many ways, and each of the women who participated experienced a different breakthrough from the others . . . proof positive that though we all take the same journey, we end at our own destination.

Maybe this winter is so fallow that you find yourself unable to participate in your usual pastimes

I’ve seen this issue coming up a lot among friends in my online community. Nearly all my friends are avid readers, and quite a large percentage are also writers and/or artists. By my estimation, a good 60-70% of them are struggling.

What they find surprising—and you might as well—is how many of them find themselves unable to focus their attention enough to read something, or even to watch a movie. Some of them can’t write, or if they do, they’ve switched to a different format than what is usual (a novelist friend is now writing flash fiction, for instance). They can’t focus enough to read a book, or even a long-form article.

Once the pandemic started last year, I was unable to make any art for the longest time. I am still not back to creating much new artwork, because it requires a creative energy that comes from a place of tremendous positive energy for me, and that is thin on the ground. Or rather, I have been able to pull my energy around myself like a weighted blanket, which has allowed me to maintain a largely positive mindset, but there’s no “excess” of positive energy to pour into my artwork.

I was also unable to read for quite a while, unless you count doomscrolling. It turns out that re-reading books —what I call “comfort reading”—was my way back into reading. Other friends have found that they can listen to an audio book, but are still unable to focus on the written page. Still others have switched up what they read: if they usually read novels, they are reading non-fiction or short stories; if they usually read non-fiction, they are reading romance novels; etc. “Comfort reading” works because there’s no anxiety for us as readers—we already know how things turn out.

I have found that I am, somewhat surprisingly, able to write during this pandemic—at least when it comes to this here blog, and the books that I wrote on getting more/better sleep (12 tips to help you sleep, available here) and on managing or reducing anxiousness (Lower your anxiety, available here). Writing poetry was nearly impossible, as was any fiction, but my desire to be of service to others helped me power through with posts to offer aid to others.

If you can’t read or focus on things right now, here’s why

It’s part of an ongoing, rolling trauma response.

Although we now know what the issue is (a new coronavirus), and there are steps underway to control it (wear mask, stay apart from other people, get the vaccine when you can), there are still a lot of unknowns. Not just because there are new mutations or variants of the virus that behave a bit differently (the result of it spreading as much as it has), but because we don’t know:

• when we will get the vaccine or

• when everyone we know and love will get the vaccine or

• how long we all need to keep wearing masks and staying apart or

• when we can just go back to what we thought of as normal or

• whether the vaccine will work on all those mutations/variants or

• whether we can transmit the virus to other people even if we’ve had the vaccine

Those are just some of the issues many of us are dealing with. And those are just the “vaccine-related” ones; there are also job-related and debt-related and school-related things as well, and all of them have a lot of uncertainties.

All of those uncertainties pile up and cause tremendous anxiety. Whether you have experienced anxiety in the past or not, this is a “new” kind of anxiety for most of us because part of our brains is continuously busy, “trying to resolve an uncertainty that is unresolvable.” This article in Vox from last spring explains it a bit.

What you can do about it

Give yourself grace.

Remember that winter is a fallow time, where we can get quiet and nurture ourselves.

Know that just as spring will come again, so will your ability to focus. To read. To write. To sing. To make art. To watch a film.

In the meantime, do what you can to nurture yourself.

• consider reducing how much time you spend watching the news

• consider reducing how much time you spend scrolling through social media

• spend some time each day in silence, by yourself, if you can—even if it’s 5 minutes

• do what you can to reduce anxiousness (meditate, sleep, hydrate, eat good food, get outside, exercise, etc.) You can read prior posts starting here, or purchase Lower your anxiety.

• Get enough sleep. If you are having issues with it, read prior posts starting here, or purchase 12 tips to help you sleep.
  

If you are struggling, please know that you aren’t alone. These aren’t normal times, and expecting ourselves to behave “normally” during an extended period of extreme duress isn’t reasonable.

Please grant yourself some grace.

Double down on your selfcare.

Lighten your load where you can.

Know that we will eventually reach the other side of this pandemic, and once we’ve all had time and space to decompress, some of the things we took for granted before COVID (like the ability to read or focus for more than a few minutes at a time) will return to us.